A Mysterious Affair Of Style Part 13

'I'm sure he will, sir, I'm sure he will.'

Changing tack, Calvert now said, 'This picture If Ever They Find Me Dead it does appear to be jinxed, doesn't it? Miss Rutherford dying as she did, right there on the set, and of course Mr Farjeon also dying only a few weeks ago. His death must have come as a great shock to you.'

'It was a shock, yes,' said Knight. 'A huge professional blow. I've acted in several of Farje's films, you know. I was one of his repertory company, as it were.'

'A professional blow, you say. Not a personal one?'

Knight fell silent. It was patent that he was debating with himself whether to speak out or not. Finally, he said: 'Inspector, I yield to no one in my admiration for Alastair Farjeon as an artist. He was, I need hardly say, a true genius, one of the very few reasons it was still possible for us to take pride in this mostly lamentable British film industry of ours. As a man ...'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'You weren't close friends, I gather?'

'But that's just it, we were close friends,' Hanway replied with a grimace. 'That's what I found so unforgivably cruel. You understand, I '

'Yes, Mr Knight?'

'Oh well, in view of what I've already been obliged to confess, I don't see why you shouldn't be acquainted with the whole story. Now that he's dead, it no longer matters. When I was arrested, it was Farje whom I asked to pay my bail and contact my lawyer and so forth. Naturally, that meant he had to be in on the whole sordid business. And, just as naturally, given his twisted personality, he at once realised the implications it held for my future career.'

'He did, nevertheless, continue to cast you in his pictures.'

'Yes, Miss Mount, I grant you, he did that. On the other hand and, with a man like Farje, there always was another hand he never once allowed me to forget what he knew. How with a single negligent word from him my reputation would be in ruins. How he'd always had a weakness for the strong stuff and how, when he'd been drinking too much, he had an unfortunate tendency to become a tiny bit talkative hence it was in my interest to make sure he stayed safely on the wagon and so on and so forth. He taunted me and taunted me until I thought I was going to lose my mind. So, you see, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend that, when I heard of his death, I didn't breathe an immense sigh of relief, even as I sincerely bemoaned his loss to the British cinema.

'But to return to what you said a moment ago, Inspector, you may be right at that. There may well be a jinx on this film. I don't want to sound ghoulish but I can't help wondering ...'

'Wondering what, sir?' Calvert prompted him.

'Wondering who's going to be next.'

Next, as it happened, but only in the sense that she was next up for questioning, was Leolia Drake.

She entered the room wearing a heavy, layered cashmere coat, clutching it to her body as tightly as though it were bitterly cold, which it wasn't, or as though she were naked underneath, which she wasn't. She accepted the chair opposite Calvert's, pulled her skirt down over the top of her knees as showily as though they themselves were showing, which they weren't, and waited for him to proceed with his interrogation.

Since Calvert's preliminaries were much as they had been with both Hanway and Knight, they need no repet.i.tion here. The essential point was that the actress duly confirmed what Lettice Morley had already told him, that she had indeed been chatting with Gareth Knight when she'd heard about Hanway's 'super new idea'.

'Then can you describe to me, Miss Drake,' said Calvert, 'at the moment when Miss Rutherford drank from the poisoned gla.s.s poison has now been officially confirmed, by the way where precisely were you? On the set itself, by any chance?'

'Yes, I was. But nowhere near Cora, you know. I was standing behind the camera. I couldn't possibly have '

'Why,' Evadne Mount asked, 'were you on the set at all if you weren't playing in the scene?'

'Oh, it's just that Rex is so frightfully brilliant I couldn't bear to tear myself away. I preferred to be there at his side, watching him be clever. It sent all sorts of funny little s.h.i.+vers up my spine.'

'I can see you have a high opinion of him as a film director.'

'Of course I have,' she replied. 'I mean to say, we are going out together.'

'Is that a fact?'

'Well, to tell you the truth' she couldn't resist a naughty-little-girlish giggle 'we're staying in together, if you follow me.'

'Is that why he gave you a part in the picture?'

'What?'

'I asked you if that was why he gave you a part in the picture?'

The actress was outraged by the question.

'What a beastly thing to say!' she finally cried. 'It wasn't my fault Patsy Sloots got hers in that fire. Inspector, I don't know who this woman is, but I simply refuse to stay here and be insulted by her.'

'Yes, Miss Mount,' said Calvert, 'I do have to agree with Miss Drake. I cannot accept there's any call for you to be so systematically hostile to witnesses who, after all, are doing their best to be of a.s.sistance to us. If you don't mind, I'll take charge of the inquiry from now on.'

The novelist mutely declining to reply, he began to pursue his own line of questioning.

'Miss Drake, what were your personal feelings towards Cora Rutherford?'

'I really don't know what to tell you.'

'Just tell me what you thought of her. It'll go no further than here.'

'She's not somebody I gave much thought to one way or the other. She was foisted on Rex, you know. He didn't choose her for the film and, if he'd been, well, a free agent, I don't suppose for a single second he would have.'

'That may well be true. Yet, in this very room, just a little while ago, Mr Hanway himself voluntarily admitted to us that he had been wrong. That he'd been tremendously excited by the way her performance was turning out.'

'Did Rex say that?'

'Yes, he did.'

'Oh well,' she replied carelessly, 'that was very handsome of him. But so like Rex. He's such a generous person.'

'You yourself were not impressed?'

'I'd rather not speak ill of the dead, Inspector.'

'You just did,' Evadne Mount muttered under her breath.

There ensued a silence which, even though it lasted only a few seconds, began to seem awkwardly protracted to the young actress, who must eventually have felt it inc.u.mbent on her to bring it to an end.

'Oh, Cora was all right in her way, if you like that kind of thing. But really, Inspector, let's face it. I mean, she was a bit well, quite a lot more than a bit past it. So p'raps,' she ended pleasantly, 'p'raps what happened was, you know, all for the best.'

'All for the best?!' Evadne let out an indignant snort. 'Do my ears deceive me, you you or are you actually suggesting that Cora ought to consider herself lucky to have been murdered?! Is that really what you're saying?'

'Oh no, no, no, that's not at all what I meant! I think it's most unfair of you, taking the words out of my mouth like that. And out of context too. Of course, it's dreadful that Cora was killed, dreadful. All I meant was well, she didn't really have too much of a future, did she, so it's not so bad I mean, it's not quite so bad as it would be if somebody like well, somebody younger and prettier oh, now you've got me so mixed up I've quite lost track of what I do mean.'

'That's all right, Miss Drake,' said Calvert diplomatically, 'that's all right. It's been a trying situation for you.'

Sensing that it would be futile to prolong the interrogation, he offered his hand to her.

'And thank you so much for coming in. You've been most helpful.'

'I tried to be, Inspector, I really tried.'

'I know you did. And you're free to go. But this is just a formality please don't make any travelling plans without first advising me.'

'Oh, I do understand. In any case, now that this picture looks as though it's up the spout, I hope quite soon to start rehearsing a play in the West End. The Philadelphia Story? It's by Sir James Barrie, you know?'

'Is it really?' Calvert tactfully agreed. 'Well, I do wish you better luck in your theatrical career than you've had so far in the films. Thank you again and goodbye.'

'Goodbye to you, Inspector,' she mumbled almost tearfully. Then, looking neither at Trubshawe, who had said nothing at all, nor at Evadne, who had said much too much, she once more gathered her coat about herself and hurried out of the room.

A moment later, Calvert turned to the novelist and wagged an emphatic index finger at her.

'Really, Miss Mount, really ...'

Chapter Twelve.

'Sit down. Please.'

Without offering a word of thanks, grasping a bizarre carpet-bag decorated with ornate, cod-Oriental motifs, out of which protruded a formidable pair of knitting-needles, Hattie Farjeon sat herself down in the chair towards which she had been motioned by the Sergeant. Since she accorded only the briefest of glances to Evadne and Trubshawe before turning wordlessly away again, Calvert didn't this time feel any obligation to make the usual excuses for their unorthodox presence or even to introduce them to her by name.

Fiftyish and frizzy-haired, dumpy, frumpy and also, or so it already appeared, permanently grumpy, Hattie Farjeon, it has to be said, was not an attractive woman. Yet there was something perversely frustrating about her physical and sartorial drabness. It was almost as though she had laboured hard to present the least prepossessing image of herself to the world. True, she was never going to win first prize in a beauty contest. Yet, one couldn't help wondering, did her hair have to be as unkempt as it was? Did her complexion have to be so speckled and blotchy? Did she really have to wear a blotter-green two-piece suit fraying at every hem at once? Above all, did she have to confront her fellow human beings human beings who, given encouragement, might well have been prepared to meet her halfway with such an insulting absence of curiosity?

But that, it seems, was Hattie. Take me or leave me as you will, her ungiving corporeal language seemed to be saying, but don't expect me to care either way.

'I'd like to thank you, Mrs Farjeon,' said Calvert, politely neutral, 'for agreeing to be interviewed. We have met before, you may remember, when your late husband's villa burnt down in that terrible fire.'

There was no response from Hattie.

'And and, eh, I do a.s.sure you, I won't take up more of your time than I absolutely have to.'

Still no response.

Calvert started to feel that, if he didn't ask a direct question soon the sort of question a refusal to answer which could no longer simply be ascribed to natural taciturnity but would const.i.tute an outright provocation he'd become too unnerved to be capable of posing any question at all.

'You are Hattie Farjeon, are you not?' he asked.

'I am.'

'The widow of Alastair Farjeon, the film producer?'

'Director.'

'Ah, yes. Ha ha, sorry about that. Yes indeed, I always do seem to get it wrong. For a layman like me, uncoached in these matters, the difference between the two isn't as clear-cut as it might be, but I suppose, for you people in the picture business ...'

His voice trailed off. Silence.

It was time to come to the point.

'Tell me, Mrs Farjeon, why have you been turning up at the studio every day?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'I asked why you still regularly make an appearance on the set. I mean to say, I realise that this picture was originally your husband's project, but after his tragic accident there would seem to be no practical reason for your presence. Or is it that you see yourself as well, as they say, the Keeper of the Flame?'

Immediately recalling the literally incendiary circ.u.mstances of Alastair Farjeon's death, however, he realised how ill-chosen that last phrase of his had been.

'I do apologise. I'm afraid I expressed myself rather badly. No pun intended, I promise you.'

'And none taken, I'm sure,' she replied sniffily. Then she fell silent again.

'But you haven't answered my question.'

'What question is that?'

'I have been led to understand, Mrs Farjeon,' Calvert said in a voice now so pitched as to call attention not only to his put-upon patience but also to the fact that it was fast running out, 'that when your husband made his films here at Elstree you yourself would always be present in the studio. But your husband is no longer with us. So why have you continued to journey down here when this film, If Ever They Find Me Dead, is being made by someone else?'

'Alastair would have wanted me to.'

'Alastair would have wanted you to? But why would he have wanted you to? Precisely what purpose do you serve?'

'I wouldn't expect you to understand what I'm about to say, Inspector, but Alastair always liked to have me near him on the set as a sort of good-luck charm he was an extremely superst.i.tious man and, if I've kept coming, it's because I feel I represent a silent guarantee of fidelity to his vision. After all, it worked in the past. Why shouldn't it work now, even if it's no longer Alastair himself who's directing the film?'

A real answer. Even a rather intriguing one.

'And why are you here today? The picture, after all, has been closed down.'

'Till further notice, yes.'

'Do I take that to mean you don't believe the project has been abandoned?'

'Of course I don't.'

'But Miss Rutherford's murder ...?'

'The fact that Cora Rutherford is dead alters very little.Her part was relatively unimportant. There are dozens of actresses in this country who could play it just as well. If you must know, the main reason for my coming to Elstree today was to discuss with Rex Hanway just who we might consider offering it to.'

'Oh, I see, I see!' Evadne erupted with her habitual precipitation. 'Poor Cora not yet in her grave and already you're thinking of who will replace her!'